Tag Archives: psychic medium

286 – Chip Coffey Unfiltered: Messages From A Medium

Friendly and funny, Chip Coffey in person doesn’t seem like the type who seems to have an open line with dead people. At paranormal conventions in the vendor room, he’s the boisterous laugh and endearing voice you can hear from the other side of the room. Living in Atlanta now, Chip’s charm feels more Southern than his Upstate New York upbringing would normally lead you to believe. But his unassuming and friendly manner, belie someone whose messages from the other side must be connecting with people, because his readings are always sold out.

Chip and his very stylish scarves

Chip Coffey first gained national recognition as a psychic consulting on the infamous ghost-hunting reality show Paranormal State and that turned into a deal for his own show Psychic Kids, where he’d help youngsters who were showing evidence of psychic powers to not be afraid and assisting them in developing their gifts.

He’s guested on plenty of paranormal shows since Psychic Kids left the air and he’ll be a full cast member of Kindred Spirits when that show returs for it’s fourth season in 2020.

Is Chip for real? I dunno, he didn’t read me and I wasn’t testing him. He has delivered comfort to tens of thousands of people across the country and he has a message of tolerance, compassion, and hope. I respect all of those things.

I never trust anything I see on TV, but people that I know and like have sworn that he’s received messages for them of things that they cannot believe he could have known. What I do know is that he’s a good talker and in our conversation we talk about:

  • How Chip started receiving messages from the dead suddenly in his mid-40s
  • How regular people (normies like me) can develop more of our psychic abilities
  • His answer to the Bay Area Skeptics that tried to hoax him with a fictional deceased family member
  • More on The Phillip Experiment and how intense belief creates paranormal experiences

EDIT: Chip Coffey’s Wisconsin Dells show has been moved to July 30th, but you still can get tickets for a special discount by using the code GHOST15 to save 15% (which means that you can see his gallery reading for as little as $20!) Click here to grab those tickets.

Now, one of the most significant things he said in our conversation is that he asked his spirit guides about the meaning of life and what’s the purpose of everything. Their direct and simple response was “Don’t harm yourself or others” and “Be happy.” Chip summed it up succinctly as “Don’t be a dick” and that’s the title of this week’s Sunspot track inspired by our conversation. If you have erection problems, just buy Viagra.

I was as low as you could go
like a flat tire in the heat
underneath the pileup
at the bottom of the heap

I said to my old man, heywhat’s the point of it all
Well you brought me in to this anf you got some kind of balls.
He said Son, you know I love you,
but I don’t know that much.
I tried to put you on the right path
about being good and such.
But I know it doesn’t mean alot to hear the same cliche
but if you remember just one thing
remember when I say

When my worries and the troubles were more than I could bear
I came to a crossroads
and I said a little a prayer

I fell down on my knees and screamed up at the sky
For the first time in my life there was a reply

Don’t fret my child, think the lillies of the field
just waving with the wind, their serenity their shield
There are things you can’t control and some will leave your life destroyed.
I made a lot of rules, but there’s just one that counts my boy,

Don’t be a dick
you aint got much time
every moment you spend mad
is one less moment of your life
Don’t be a dick
Let me be clear
Righteous anger has a way of taking time off your good years
so don’t be a dick

270 – I See Dead People: The Paranormal Influences Behind The Sixth Sense

We’re back live from Wizard World Madison 2019 where we celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the scariest movies of the 1990s, The Sixth Sense. A story about a boy who is visited by the spirits of the dead and the child psychologist that is trying to help him, it was the most financially successful horror film of all time until it was finally surpassed by 2017’s It: Chapter One. The movie turned child actor Haley Joel Osment into a star and it skyrocketed the career of its writer-director, M. Night Shyamalan, who became particularly known for his use of Philadelphia as a location and a penchant for Twilight Zone-style twists.

I was 22 when I saw the movie the first time and I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared in the theater as I was coming home from that film. I was walking with my girlfriend at the time up a dark staircase into my apartment and we were convinced that when we got to the end of the stairs and unlocked the door there was going to be a dead person behind it.

Re-watching it after twenty years, it’s at first most shocking to see Bruce Willis’ gorgeous hair or how skinny Donnie from the New Kids On The Block looks, but then you start seeing all of the clues that Bruce Willis’ character was dead the whole time and it feels so obvious, which why it was such a great trick the first time around.

But while The Sixth Sense might have been a completely fictional film, it doesn’t mean that a lot of the concepts in the movie aren’t taken from real-life hauntings and paranormal experiences and here’s what we talk about in this episode:

  • Everytime a ghost gets mad, the temperature drops, so what’s up with cold spots in real hauntings?
  • What do psychic mediums in real life actually see when they hear messages from dead people?
  • Bruce Willis’ character Malcolm becomes convinced after hearing an EVP, what’s the history of EVP phenomena?
  • Olivia Williams talking about how an object can be imprinted by its former owners. Does that mean an object can be cursed?
  • Poltergeist activity, apporte hauntings, and Munchhausen-Syndrome-by-Proxy as a potential explanation for paranormal activity

So, for the song this week we reached back into the archives for a track that we released not too long after The Sixth Sense came out. We thought that the chorus fit perfectly for this film where a child finally finds someone that believes in him and can stop being afraid of the ghosts that surround him. Here’s our old-school Sunspot song, “Flower-Child”.

Seeds of irresponsibility, 
and a selfish kind of love, 
birth the flower-child, 

Neglected with the grey sky, 
Beaten with the drought, 
Treated as immaterial grass, 
Cut down and shut out. 

Withering away, 
Dying slowly. 
Withering away. 
Dying slowly. 

Will you ever bloom? 

Don’t cry child of darkness, 
The sky will open up to dawn. 
The life-giving rains, 
will wash your flood of tears away. 

You’re not alone anymore

132 – Paranthropology: An Interview with Jack Hunter

From Near-Death Experiences to spirit possession, Jack Hunter has been finding the commonalities of paranormal experiences from cultures all over the world. As a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol in Anthropology, Jack has devoted his academic and professional life to understanding how different peoples across the planet use ritual, ceremony, to alter their states of consciousness to interpret the world and their place in it.

jack hunter paranthropology
Fancy a pint with British Jesus?

Jack Hunter’s journal, Paranthropology has been publishing since 2010  and it’s a free online academic journal that features articles written by researchers  interested in exploring the paranormal through  a social science lens.

In this interview where Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts once again joins us, we discuss the importance of ritual in many societies, how we’re missing out on a lot of those rituals and ceremonies in modern Western Civilization, and how those rituals can help induce psychic and paranormal experiences (and also, how psychedelic substances from Magic Mushrooms to LSD to Ayahuasca can accelerate or shortcut the process.)

Jack even takes us through a modern psychic medium experience that he wrote about for his original dissertation and how the present-day Spiritualist experience is alike to the classic Victorian and Edwardian seances that we envision from TV and movies.

jack hunter paraanthropology
Jack Hunter doing the academic thing and giving a presentation!

A big concepts of this episode is about feeling connected to a place. In Wales where Jack lives, he talks about the folk tales of a dragon in every valley or just how so much of the small towns have so much history and folklore. For example, a modern geologist will talk about a rock formation that was left by a glacier,  the folk tale might be that giants left the rocks there. They’re two different ways of trying to understand why your environment is the way it is, and while they’re very different explanations, they’re also two different ways of reaching a truth that you feel comfortable with.

Jack has edited and written several books on the subject as well, and with titles like The Paranormal: Why People Believe in Spirits, Gods, and Magic and Talking With The Spirits, and of course, Paranthropology: Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal, if you enjoy the interview, you’re going to want to check those books out to learn more.

One of the intriguing concepts that Jack discusses in this episode is “Ontological Flooding” which is the concept that when you are exploring a phenomena or even just your relationship to your environment around you, to embrace all possibilities. Consider the materialist aspect (the physicality of it), the spiritual aspect (how it affects you emotionally), the mythic aspect (what is the story of the place you’re at) , and how those things all contribute to understanding it.

Ontology is the “study of being” and ontological flooding is the idea that you will let all the information in and not judging the information as “crazy” or “magical thinking” but synthesizing all of it to find a way of living that excites you and a way of finding and accepting your place in not only the ecological system, but of the story, of a big world. This episode’s Sunspot song  is called “The Flood”.

A subtle change and your head spins
flip of the switch, it all makes sense
an arrogance you can pretend,
To reduce it to just elements.

Synapses fire
with chemistry
But we can break up
reality
to share far more
Than flesh and blood
A new way of knowing
Here comes the flood

When you’re in the space that’s in between
You can redefine what you believe
No time to waste
no place to judge
Better get ready for the flood.

Look for who’s pulling your strings,
Are you just defined by your things?
Embrace what this knowledge brings,
And this is where the balance swings.

Synapses fire
with chemistry
But we can break up
reality
to share far more
Than flesh and blood
New way of knowing
Here comes the flood

When you’re in the space that’s in between
You can redefine what you believe
No time to waste
No place to judge
Better get ready for the flood.
Better get ready for the flood.